Meaning of life = 42?

Question:can nyone explain this

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: can nyone explain this

somebody made up a crazy formula that supposedly explained the meaning of life, the outcome of the equation equaled 42
it does also feature as a joke in The HItchikers Guide to the Galaxy

The hitchhikers guide to the universe .....................
Now away you go ... find the book and read it.

It is the right answer to a meaningless question. Try reading "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy", I think it's in there somewhere. Also 41 & 43 did not work.

Yes it is a reference to the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In it, the protagonist is told that 42 is the ultimate answer Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. The protagonist says, what is the question? And offers 6x7. He is told maybe, the fact is no one knows the ultimate question. So when people ask, What is the meaning of life, someone always answers 42. It took 7.5 million years to get the answer.

This solution is made up for the sake of the movie.
Everyone is searching for an answer, by the time they figure it out, they don't remember the question. As Wiki suggests " The Ultimate Question itself is unknown - suggesting on an allegorical level that it is more important to ask the right questions than to seek definite answers."

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything has a numeric solution in Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, a "simple answer" to The Ultimate Question is requested from the computer Deep Thought—specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7? million years to compute and check the answer which turns out to be 42. Unfortunately, The Ultimate Question itself is unknown - suggesting on an allegorical level that it is more important to ask the right questions than to seek definite answers.

When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, the computer says that it can't, but can help design an even more powerful computer (the Earth) which can. The programmers then embark on a further, ultimately futile, ten million year program to discover The Ultimate Question, a process that is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans, and then ruined completely, five minutes before completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons.

It is the correct answer to "How Many Roads Must a Man Walk Down."

this question is very old which explains the answer. You see many many years ago humans died at a much younger age, poor diet no health care sabre tooth tigers... so they asked what is a good age to live to? turns out 42 for a cave man is like 103 to us today. Unfortunately pictures of cave men spearing gazelle on cave walls was wrongly translated into hunting images and not this true question, hence why the question thru time has shortened from how old is a good age to live to? to whats the meaning of life.......................

True story!

In the series, a computer is designed to deduce the 'Ultimate answer' to "um, you know... life, the universe and everything."
It eventually returns the answer 42...
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.
To find the answer the researchers create Earth as a living computer, but those efforts are for naught as the Earth is bulldozed minutes before finding the question.

Adams admitted to picking the number at random as a perfectly normal number, though the characters come up with some absurd answers (highlighting the problem of there actually being an ultimate question/answer to find) such as:

"Six by nine is 42. That's it."

Still seeking but sure it is not actually 42.
It might be Infinity OR Intelligence, but is more likely IMHO to be a combination of them both.
As an Alternative One might Postulate "ENERGY" Quantum physics seems to point to energy being the source of all matter, and intelligence to be the source of all energy/vibration. Probably the only guy alive who can can give you a better answer is Stephen Hawking!

Remind me once again wasn't that book A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy a comedy? Then what Douglas Adam suggests is just a comic anticlimax for a question that practical unanswerable. It is his way to pulling a jock upon people who knowing that the answer cannot possibly be answered and even if it is ever answered the answer cannot possibly humble 42, still stay suspended in disbelief and wait for an answer until the climax is at its peak and then come the answer ... what the hell, damn!

This is what life perhaps is that we like to live in unreal and yet promising anticipations, happy expectations, and false hope. We hope all our lives that someday something fantastic is going to happen to me, but then ... nothing happens! We may turn 42, or 52, or 62, how care for that matter!

I no longer believe that this 42 to is just a gimmick, or cheap publicity stunt, put in the book to cause intrigue in the mind. I think it is meaningful. It is just that it is not meaningful in the sense we commonly like anything to be.

I will be 42 on 22.03.08....for me life has a new beginning on every birthday....

I'd say live it and find out.

Adams said he chose 42 because it is the angle of a rainbow

I have only read parts of his books but I like to think of 'meaning' as in 'mean', a type of average so the average of the universe is 42.

That's not what he actually meant though.